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Showing posts with label Gary Graver. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gary Graver. Show all posts

Friday, May 27, 2022

Sadistic Hypnotist, The (1969)

... aka: Wanda (The Sadistic Hypnotist)

Directed by:
Greg Corarito

After peering in a store window and envisioning figurines of nude women are actual nude women, a man in sunglasses (played by the director himself) dips into an adult theater to watch a double feature. First up is something about the "Bare-Fax Nudist Camp," featuring a voyeur stalking some young women back to their camp and watching them lounge around as nature intended (with strategically placed newspapers, magazines, towels and hats covering their fronts and some of the more embarrassed ladies hilariously covering up their own faces!) through a knothole in the fence. A monotone female announcer then comes on to introduce the next feature: "Perverted Films has a treat in store for you. That six foot two inch love goddess Miss Dikey Dikeman is the star of our feature presentation. I'm sure you'll find it very hypnotic" and a title card for "Miss Dikey Dikeman and Her Friends???" (!!) appears on screen.

While driving down a secluded country road, Sylvester ("Dick Dangerfield" / Richard Compton) is in an off-screen car accident but gets "rescued" by "tall, harsh-looking brunette" Wanda (the almost freakishly long-legged Katharine Shubeck) and "rather sweet-looking blonde" Greta (Janine Sweet), who take him back to their home. The man, falling in and out of consciousness, also provides hilarious, double entendre-filled narration which includes lines like "a blinding shaft of sunlight brought an enormous mansion into view!" and "the throbbing in my head proved too much and, with a final attempt to rise, I gave in." Sylvester also recalls being taken into an S&M-themed bedroom ("I must admit, there were many leather objects") and that he was "vaguely aware of female hands taking my clothes off."








Fifteen hours later, Sylvester awakens from his stupor, but weakened and with a severe concussion. He's told that he crashed into a sand dune and that his car will be ready sometime soon so he can leave, but that all turns out to be a ruse. Queen Bee Wanda has no intentions of letting him go and makes him the unwilling submissive in her bondage games. He's tied down to a bed and repeatedly smacked with a riding crop, is forced to go on long walks with heavy iron shackles attached to his ankles and is almost drowned in the swimming pool. Greta, who is much more sympathetic than Wanda, realizes this guy isn't like most of the others they've kidnapped: He actually seems to be enjoying most of this!









Wanda leads an all-female cult, which does not have any defined purpose aside from them all taking off their clothes a lot. Half a dozen other ladies swing by for a visit and start out with a game of "Rip It Off," which finds them all stripping off their bikinis in the swimming pool. Later that evening, Wanda uses her hypnotic powers to make a door-to-door cosmetics saleslady (Sheri Jackson) strip down to lingerie and perform a wild go-go dance for her and her pals at their lingerie slumber party. Wanda then uses her powers to make one of her girls take her top off, makes another envision she's an invincible karate master (!) and then turns to the short-haired Zelda and says, "Even though you're a lesssssbian, let's try this. You know, forget about that... You're really a nymphomaniiiiiiaaaac!" She then sends Zelda to the bedroom to ravish a tied-up Sylvester, who screams "Lady, you don't understand! I'm a Republican!" in protest.

But the fun and games can't last forever, can they? A radio announcer comes on and proclaims: "Just minutes ago, a maniac escaped from the state funny farm! The sadistic rapist is mentally demented! He is complete unbalanced! He cannot control his emotions, especially when he is near attractive females! Be on the lookout for this man!" The escapee, Jack Strange (Daryl Colinot), shows up at the home wearing a white coat that reads "State Fun-ee Farm" on the back, lest we get confused about who he is. He first raids their liquor cabinet and makes himself a drink. Then he goes through their record collection, stopping in disgust when he finds Dylan and Sarah Vaughan albums. Finally, after going through a trunk filled with S&M toys, he makes his presence known by leaping out and vicious whipping all of the ladies. The women are then all tied up and subjected to more whipping and rape, plus hallucinogenic drugging.









Under the condition he won't refer to him as insane, Jack unties Sylvester and he ends up assisting him in terrorizing and abusing the ladies for revenge. A drug and alcohol fiend, Jack discovers a hidden stash of LSD (in a large black bottled labeled "LSD" no less!), which results in a long trip out sequence filled with flashing red and green lights, someone peaking through a glass pot of boiling water, nude body painting, strange psychedelic garage rock noise and rapid fire editing. The "maniac" then turns to Sylvester and asks, "If you had a choice of these beavers, which one would you take?" and promises they're "gonna wear them out, daddy-o!" However, the ladies eventually regain control and there's a twist at the end involving the porn theater patron.









I was actually pretty impressed with the across-the-board technical incompetence on display in this pseudo self aware trash! It's ineptly directed, written (with awkward and clearly improvised dialogue), shot (with lots of boring medium and long takes, blurry shots and shadows of the camera operator), lit and edited (by Gary Graver, no less). The sound, with a generic intrusive music score constantly drowning out the already muffled dialogue, is equally awful. And then there's the cast. There's not a convincing performance in this entire film and it's clear no one - in front of or behind the camera - is taking a minute of this seriously. Lines are flubbed, people look right at the camera and laugh and everyone's basically just goofing off the entire time. The T&A is wall-to-wall for the duration so if that's what you're looking for, you'll get your fill here.


Though the two female leads are completely unknown (this is the only known credit for either), some of the supporting females are played by late 60s / early 70s skin flick regulars like Lynn Harris (The Sexcapades of Don Diego) and Vincene Wallace (Russ Meyer's Vixen!). The male lead went on to a prolific career as a TV director and was married to actress Veronica Cartwright for 25 years until his death in 2007.

Director / writer Corarito made a few other films of this stripe: Diamond Stud (1970), the X-rated Hard on the Trail (1972), featuring Lash La Rue, and Delinquent School Girls (1975), which also featured young women terrorized by mental home escapees. This film is supposedly also based on his "novel" of the same name, though there's no evidence that book was ever published. Robert Vincent O'Neil, who went on to direct the underrated THE PSYCHO LOVER (1970) and the popular and profitable 80s exploitation film Angel (1983) as well its first sequel, Avenging Angel (1985), was one of the producers.


Not surprisingly, being right up their alley and all, this was a Something Weird acquisition and they issued both a standalone VHS release in 1992, followed by a DVD release in 2004, which pairs it up with Dr. Sex (1964).

★1/2

Sunday, March 20, 2022

Evil Toons (1992) [copyright 1990]

... aka: Gonoszkák (Wicked)
... aka: Magias do Mal (Evil Spells)
... aka: Qui a peur du diable? (Who's Afraid of the Devil?)

Directed by:
Fred Olen Ray

This has a lot in common with Jim Wynorski's Sorority House Massacre II. They were both filmed at around the same time on a budget of around 150,000 dollars, have a (very good) Chuck Cirino score and have the same basic plot about a handful of busty, nightie-clad babes trapped in an large old house where one becomes possessed by an evil spirit and starts killing off all the others. Both films are also filled with tongue-in-cheek humor and endless in-jokes that you can only appreciate if you've seen your fair share of exploitation / horror / trash movies, as well as a weird next door neighbor character who's always lurking around outside and appears to be stalking the girls. Oh yeah, and let's not forget a generous helping of T&A, as that's one of the chief reasons these movies were made in the first place and why they excelled on both the home video market and late night cable. In my opinion, Wynorski's film (despite being less ambitious) is the better of the two because the dialogue is consistently funnier and it somehow works as both a slasher flick (with plenty of the expected bloodshed) as well as a send-up of exploitation films, whereas this one doesn't work very well as a horror film and is more straight-up camp. Still, if you know what you're getting yourself into and are familiar with the director and cast, Toons is a silly, upbeat and pleasant enough way to kill 83 minutes of your time.








The home where sorcerer Gideon Fisk (a somnambulistic David Carradine) hung himself because of an evil, talking book many years earlier is now being sold by Burt Wentworth (Dick Miller), who's in need of a clean-up crew pronto before the new owners can move in. Enter Terry (Suzanne Ager, Ray's girlfriend at the time), Megan (Monique Gabrielle), Roxanne (Madison Stone) and Jan ("Stacey Nix" aka Barbara Dare), who apparently all work for some cleaning company but show up for work dressed like Hollywood Blvd hookers in cut-off Daisy Dukes and spandex. The girls are paid a whopping 100 bucks apiece to spend the weekend there and tidy the place up, but after some exploring around and an impromptu strip-tease, Carradine's character shows up at the front door to deliver a special package. Inside is the evil book and the nerdy Megan picks the wrong passage to translate; unleashing a wolf-like cartoon demon in the process. It promptly possesses Roxanne and she begins killing everyone off with eventual plans on releasing other demons from the book after she's harvested a few souls for Satan.









While this was heavily-promoted as a Roger Rabbit-style merging of cartoon and live action in a horror-comedy context, you'll be extremely disappointed if you expect too much. There are only two toon sequences in the film lasting just a few minutes apiece and only in one of them does the Chas Balun-designed demon really interact with one of the actors. That said, the fact they were even able to pull off that much for so little is impressive for the time and budget. There's not much plot to speak of but in lieu of that we get some spirited bad acting, lots of corny dialogue (only some of which is funny), a few semi-famous stars in small roles (Arte Johnson is also on hand as the pervert neighbor) and nude scenes provided by each of the female stars. Miller ends up with the most amusing bit and has a very funny scene watching himself in A BUCKET OF BLOOD on TV ("How come this guy never won an Academy Award?") and then spurning the sexual advances of his sexpot wife ("Special Guest Star" Michelle Bauer), who then is forced to retreat to her bedroom alone with her chainsaw!








The biggest surprise of the cast is certainly hardcore porn actress Madison, who's extremely lively and, eh, animated (may as well use a bad pun myself since this film is full of 'em!) in her role. Her over-the-top, eye-rolling facial expressions and bizarre Valley Girl dialogue delivery make for a welcome contrast next to the more wooden performances from many of her co-stars and it's actually kind of a shame she didn't end up in more of these. Madison appeared in both this and the R-rated NAKED OBSESSION (also 1990) very early on in her career so it's possible that at one point she was attempting a "legit" career in B movies before transitioning over to adult. Same can not be said for fellow adult actress Dare, who acted in this right as she was exiting the adult industry for good. While not a great actress, this may also be Gabrielle at her very best. She's oddly endearing playing a shy / innocent character for a change, plus her 'mirror scene' reveal is probably the most memorable moment in the entire film.









Ray, who also scripted under the alias "Sherman Scott" and co-produced, had initially attempted to get financing for this project from Roger Corman, but his request for 250,000 dollars was rejected because Corman felt it couldn't properly be done on such a small budget. Instead, Ray ended up mostly financing the film himself... and for 100K less! While the animation is minimal, it's fairly well-executed under the circumstances. Ray also provided a distorted voice over for the monster and book, while an uncredited Robert Quarry voiced the demon. As per his usual, Gary Graver did a fine job shooting it, though the mostly-subdued use of colorful lighting (this would have been the perfect time to go all-out!) feels somewhat like a missed opportunity.


After it made its VHS debut via Prism in 1992, Ray's company Retromedia handled subsequent distribution. There was a 2002 DVD release, a 2010 "20th Anniversary Special Edition" DVD release, which comes with a Ray commentary track, and a 2017 "25th Silver Anniversary Edition" Blu-ray release, which is a marked quality improvement over all previous releases, features a new Ray commentary track and lots of other extras.

★★1/2
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